Place Your Bets
by KorruptJustice
Summary: Jeff and Annie have been hiding something from the study group. But the study group have been hiding something from Jeff and Annie, too. (Some profanity; don't read if that offends you.)
1. Chapter 1

**Summary:**Jeff and Annie have been hiding something from the study group. But the study group have been hiding something from Jeff and Annie, too.

**Disclaimer:** I don't own Community. And even if I did, I wouldn't tell you.

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"Jeff, how long have you and Annie been dating?"

Admittedly, Jeff could have handled the situation better. He had just walked into the study room, fashionably late as always (although the study group would concede that for the last few months he hadn't been showing up _as_ late), and his ass had just hit seat when Abed had hit him with the completely unexpected question. He sprang back up, sending the chair tipping over behind him with a thud as his eyes darted around the room to each of his friends before settling on Annie's empty chair. He was thankful that she was at a doctor's appointment and would be late. At least she wouldn't have to put up with these accusations for now.

Jeff took a brief second to consider his options. He couldn't play it cool or shrug it off with a dismissive joke; not when he still had to turn around and pick his chair up off the floor. Righteous anger was always a possibility, but that could lead to a "me thinks thou doth protest too much" reaction, which he needed to avoid. He discarded that choice, and settled instead on confused indignation.

"Abed, what on earth would make you think that Annie and I are dating?" Abed shrugged.

"It seemed the most likely way to explain this." That's when Jeff noticed Abed had his laptop in front of him, and felt dread slowly crawl up his spine as Abed opened it and pressed play on the video he had ready to go.

It was a short video, only a minute long. It was filmed through the small window in a stairwell door. Through the window, the hallway of Jeff's apartment building was visible. The hall was empty for a moment, and then Annie stepped into view. From her location, Jeff knew she had just gotten off the elevator. She turned to her right, away from the camera, and headed down toward the end of the hall. There she paused to straighten her skirt before knocking on a door. It swung open almost instantly, and Jeff stood in the doorway. The camera zoomed in close enough to see Jeff's wide grin while he spoke with Annie, and then Annie's shriek of laughter loud enough for the camera to pick up as Jeff lifted her by the waist and pulled her into a deep kiss, which she eagerly returned. Annie hitched her legs around Jeff and they stumbled back into his apartment, the door banging shut behind them.

Abed closed his laptop as Jeff sat there. On the outside he was completely still, but his mind was racing frantically, trying to find anything to say. Somehow he doubted the study group would buy "It's not like it looks like."

"Abed, were you following Annie? Do you have any idea how creepy and wrong that is?" Jeff kept his voice low and menacing, desperate to pull the attention of the study group away from him and Annie and towards whatever it was that Abed had been doing. In truth, Jeff was sure that Abed had a reasonable explanation for the footage, but in a situation such as this Jeff considered throwing a friend under the bus in order to buy himself some time to think a necessary tactic. Abed was unfazed by the accusation in Jeff's voice, however.

"Actually, I was doing location scouting for my next film project and I thought that the exterior of your apartment building would be perfect. I was doing test shots when I saw Annie arrive and I knew there was something strange going on, since she had mentioned earlier that afternoon that she was going to the library to study and wouldn't be back 'til late."

"You guys…it's not what it looks like?" Jeff hadn't intended for that to sound so much like a question, but was unable to prevent the rise in his voice. And yeah, he had decided less than a minute ago that the group would never buy that excuse, but he really didn't have anything better to offer at this point, so what the hell, right?

"Really?" Britta said. "Cause it looks like either you and Annie are dating, or you have some sort of 'friends with benefits' arrangement with each other, which seems unlikely, given that A – this is Annie we're talking about, and B – even you're not a big enough jerk to do that to her."

"Now Jeffrey, we're not mad. We just want the truth. How long have you and Annie been dating?"

"You know, you say you're not mad at me, but you still look like you're about three seconds away from beating me to death with your gigantic purse." Shirley sighed but put her bag down on the floor.

"Now will you talk to us?"

"No, because there's nothing to say. If there is anything going on between me and Annie – and that is not an admission of guilt– but if there is, the only two people that it concerns are me and Annie."

"Fine. But we will be asking Annie about this next time we see her, and you know that she'll crack eventually." Shirley said in her sweetest voice, and Jeff knew she was serious. He also knew that she was right. He groaned.

"Yes, Annie and I are dating. We have been for a while now."

"How long?" Pierce asked.

Jeff squirmed in his seat. This was the part that he and Annie had dreaded whenever they talked about telling the group. He imagined the fact that they had hid this for so long was not going to be easy to take, and he couldn't blame them, even if it had been for a good reason in the beginning. They just wanted some time to themselves, to make sure that they could work without the added pressure of the group watching their every move. A little time without the group's certain disapproval hanging over their heads would give them the chance to figure out what they had. But even after they realized it was something serious, they continued to hide, unable to find the right time to tell them, and now it was way too late to pretend like it wasn't a big deal. He briefly reconsidered his decision to protect Annie; not for his sake but he knew they would take the news better coming from her than they ever would from him.

"It's been about four months now."

The room grew still as everyone processed this information. Jeff just sat in his chair, confusion gnawing at the back of his mind. He hadn't expected such a subdued reaction. He was ready for shouts and cursing; quite possibly threats (mostly from Britta). But the quiet was somehow even more unnerving. When someone finally spoke, it was Britta, but what she said surprised him.

"No. We need to know _exactly_ how long this has been going on."

"Why? What the hell is going on here?"

"Answer the question, Jeffrey." Jeff still wanted to know why they cared so much, but when Shirley asked him in her most mothering tone, he couldn't resist. It was unbelievable she could guilt him with that voice better than his own mother ever could.

"Uh…our first date was the Friday after we came back to school, so…the seventh, I guess?" His friends once again fell quiet. Troy broke the silence with a question Jeff did not expect.

"So, who won the pool?"

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**Chapter 2 (the final chapter) will be up soon.**


	2. Chapter 2

_"So, who won the pool?"_

They one by one turned towards Abed, who at some point when Jeff wasn't paying attention had pulled out a small black notebook and was carefully flipping through its pages.

"…Wait, what?" The group ignored Jeff, keeping their eyes on Abed, watching as he methodically flipped through the notebook, dragging his finger down a column as he scanned each page.

"You guys bet on me and Annie?" Abed looked up from the notebook.

"It didn't start out that way. Britta and I had an argument about whether or not you would ever admit your feelings for Annie and ask her out. Britta said that it would never happen, but I figured it would hit you at Graduation how you couldn't let your time at Greendale go by without letting her know how you felt about her, which would lead to asking her out to Mori's Steak House, which is kind of a cliché in hindsight, but some things are cliché for a reason. They work. Anyway, we ended up betting on whether or not you two would ever go out, but then Shirley pointed out that if we didn't set an end date for the bet, technically the only way Britta could win is if one of you died; otherwise, you could end up hooking up when we're all senior citizens and I would still win the bet. So we decided to make the bet on whether or not you would ask her out on or before Graduation day, or "G-Day", as we call it." Britta broke in.

"No one but him or Troy calls it that. We put $20 bucks on it, but the rest of the group wanted to get in on it too, and then Pierce mentioned it to one of the hipsters, and Shirley gossiped about it to someone in the women's bathroom, and before we knew it, the entire school wanted in. So Abed decided the easiest way was for everyone to put up $20, pick a date, and whoever was closest would win."

"So what did you all say?"

"Well, I kept Graduation, Britta chose 10 years after Graduation, or as she put it, "When it would finally hit you that there was a chance you could die old and alone and miserable and would reach out to the only person who could still stand to be around you more than a few seconds at a time…"

"I may have been really bitter at the time." Britta explained.

"…Shirley picked the first day of senior year…Pierce picked – and again I'm quoting – "Never, 'cause he's gay." And Troy decided that you'd actually been dating since the debate kiss freshman year and the entire time since then has simply been an elaborate ruse to hide your relationship."

"When did you start this whole thing?" Jeff asked.

"Well, Britta and I first started talking about it after the…incident, for lack of a better term, at the beginning of sophomore year, so the bet went school wide probably a little after Halloween that year."

"Yeah, enough with the history lesson. Who won the bet, Abed?" Shirley asked, impatience getting the better of her.

"The winning pick was…drum roll please…" Troy immediately began beatboxing. "…Close enough. The winner, picking the exact day… Professor Ian Duncan."

"Just how much money was in this pool, anyway?" Jeff asked.

Abed consulted his notebook again.

"20 bucks a pop, times 152 teachers and students is…$3,040."

"I just tweeted the results and Duncan replied he's on his way to collect." Pierce said.

Indeed, Duncan walked into the study room just a few moments later.

"Alright, losers, where's my money?" He crowed. Abed reached into his bag and pulled out a thick roll of cash which he tossed to Duncan.

"$3,040. Count it if you like; make sure it's all there." Duncan quickly started thumbing through the bills.

"$460…$480…$500." He stopped and put the $500 in his pocket, still grinning. "No more cheap hooch for me! Then again if I stick with the cheap stuff, I'll be able to buy, and hence drink, a heck of a lot more of it. Pleasure doing business with you, Winger." He tossed the rest of the roll onto the table in front of Jeff and walked out of the room.

The group stared at Jeff as he started counting the money. It was Abed who spoke.

"What the hell just happened?"

"Oh, I forgot to mention. I found out about your little pool months ago, and gave Duncan $500 to make the bet for me."

"And what, you decided to play along and act all outraged to what…fuck with us?" Britta asked.

"Pretty much, yeah. I mean, don't get me wrong, the money is nice, but it was mostly to fuck with you."

"But how did you even find out about it?" Jeff just scoffed.

"Come on, do you really think it's possible for nearly the entire school to get involved in something like this without it eventually getting back to me? You know what the rumor mill at Greendale is like. It's a miracle that neither of us heard for as long as we did. Nobody around here can keep a secret for long. You know, except for me and Annie dating right under your noses for four months."

"Oh yeah? Well, what do you think Annie would have to say about you exploiting your relationship for monetary gain?" Shirley asked.

"Hey, I just passed Duncan in the hallway. Was it really over 3,000 dollars?" Annie practically bounced into the study room with a gigantic smile on her face.

"Wait a minute! You knew about this?" Shirley yelped.

"Of course. It was my idea." Annie smirked as the group stared at her in shock while Jeff just smiled.

While everyone else had been talking, Abed had gone back to his notebook.

"Wait a minute…Duncan placed his bet three months ago. So you knew about this for three months and didn't say anything to any of us?" Annie shrugged sheepishly.

"We were going to confront you guys at first… we were both pretty mad when we found out. I mean, we'd been sneaking around because we thought you guys would explode when you found out we were dating, only to find out that you're treating our personal life like it's a game!" Annie had started out calmly, but by the time she finished talking her voice had climbed to a shout. The group was stunned at her outburst. Troy, Pierce, Britta, and Shirley had the decency to look slightly shamed at their actions. Abed's expression remained the same as it always did, but Jeff could guess how he felt about making Annie upset. Annie took a deep breath to regain her composure before continuing. "Not only that, you didn't even consider what would happen if we found out about this and weren't in a relationship! So instead of confronting you, we thought you might learn a lesson this way."

"Also, do you have any idea how much it costs to drive three towns over every time we go out on a date?" Jeff joked. "Half of this," he held up the roll of cash, "is gas money."

"The point is, we decided to get back at you guys some way, and I thought of using someone who hadn't entered yet in exchange for a part of the winnings."

"It was my idea to use Duncan. She wanted to use _Leonard_." Jeff said with distaste.

"Well, I didn't want to use someone who was considered a friend, in case it looked suspicious."

"So wait, did you know that Abed was outside Jeff's apartment that night? Did you guys plan on getting caught?" Britta asked.

"No, that was unexpected. We'd actually just started talking about when and how to tell you that we were dating. We were planning on inviting all of you to Mori's after Graduation and letting you know then, using the pool to pay for it. Then Jeff texted me that you were interrogating him about our relationship, and we decided it was time to come clean about everything."

"Now, if there are no other questions – and actually even if there are, 'cause I don't care anymore –Annie and I have to get going. We have to get ready for our date tonight. Milady."

Annie smiled at him.

"Milord."

They exited the room together, leaving the rest of the study group sitting around the table in shock. Britta turned to Abed.

"Twenty bucks says they break up by the end of the year."

"Oh, that's not nice, betting on them again…I got twenty says they're married within three years."

"Twenty bucks they break up when Winger realizes he's gay."


End file.
